Gaming machines currently emit or provide sounds as the gaming machines pay out or issue a number of coins or tokens to a player. Typically, the machines emit or provide a familiar bell sound or ding to a player. The machines time the sound emission to correspond to the time when a coin or token contacts the bottom of a payout tray. When multiple coins or tokens contact the tray in a sequence, the machines emit or provide the payout sounds to correspond to the sequence. In effect, current gaming machines simulate an amplified version of the sound that the actual coins or tokens make when they contact or strike the surface of the payout tray. When the machine issues one coin or token, the existing machines make one sound. When the machine issues many coins or tokens, the existing machines make a plurality of the same sounds.
The purpose of emitting or providing these sounds, which correspond to the frequency of the payout, is to increase player enjoyment and excitement by enhancing the payout to the player and by magnifying and intensifying the payout. Additionally, other players hear the payout sounds, which increases their excitement, enjoyment and expectation of success. These sounds also create an overall excitement in the gaming area.
Gaming machines have historically employed a single bell or ding sound as described above. The implementor of the device can program the gaming device to vary the single sound either by making it louder or making it occur more frequently. However, there exists a level above which the amplitude or loudness of the sound will begin to disturb or hurt the eardrums of a player and surrounding players. There also exists a frequency level above which a player will not be able to discern one sound from another. In such case, the player will perceive one continuous sound. Thus, the known methods limit the ability of gaming devices to enhance excitement during payouts or credit transfers, such as a transfer from a bonus round to the base game as described below. A need exists for a method to enhance the excitement of relatively larger payouts, wherein many coins are paid out over an extended time period. A need also exists to develop a method that recognizes higher frequencies of payout issuance, wherein many coins are paid out at once.
It is also desirable to enhance a player's enjoyment whenever the game awards credits to a player. Normally, when the player succeeds at the normal or base game of the gaming device, the game awards electronic credits and updates the player's credit display. Further, to enhance player enjoyment and excitement, gaming manufacturers have provided players with machines having bonus schemes. The bonus schemes give players multiple opportunities to receive relatively large payouts over and above the player's success in the base game.
The bonus scheme provides a game within the game, and consequently, a separate and distinct payout from that of the base game. Typically, the payout of a bonus scheme is either an addition of game credits to the player's total game credits or a multiplication of the amount of base game credits that the player has bet before entering the bonus round. In both the base and bonus games, the payout often does not involve actual coins or tokens that contact the bottom of a payout tray.
While the gaming device can employ the typical ding or bell sound when the game electronically transfers credits to or updates the player's base game credit total from the bonus round, the significance of emulating or magnifying the actual sound of a coin or token contacting the payout tray is lost. It is therefore desirable to create another method of audibly recognizing, celebrating and enhancing the player's success in a bonus round that preferably corresponds to the bonus scheme. The method should also correspond to the overall theme of the gaming device so that the base game can employ the method whenever the player's award is an electronic addition or transfer of credits rather than an actual payout.
Newer gaming machines typically contain a video display or touch screen that enables the newer machines to display images that older machines could not display. Gaming machines containing a video display or touch screen have the capability to visually enhance a payout or transfer. It is therefore further desirable to create a device and method for enhancing payouts or transfers that incorporate both visual and audio displays in accordance with the base game and bonus scheme themes.